Erasing History - Not An Easy Task

1967? We were only two years from a moon landing in 1967, not 20 years like now.

Thw White House may have directed it, but Congress has stated something to the effect that it can't be canceled without Congress' approval. So legally, funding must continue until the new budget is approved.

I think the $2.5 billion to close out Constellation should be enough to wipe the NASA web servers.

Times have changed and the expectation from published literature has changed. Reliable, relevant, consistent sources are casualties of the information age. Fortunately, so are a limited few sources of filtered information.

Here's a prediction for a few months to come: the stale information of a past administration will be of little interest when the implementation realities of this administration hit the road.

I certainly hope they do not "wipe the web servers". Assuming Constellation is dead, nevertheless for all the money that was spent on it the documentation should still be available to the public. It was a NASA program, even if it
never flew in space. Ideally there should be an index page noting that the program was cancelled "and here's a link to the old web pages", but really, I'd rather the NASA web people spent their time adding new content rather than erasing old stuff. If a few old pages still say "we are planning to do this", big deal.

Way to kick us when we're down Keith. A lot of jobs are up in the air with this, including mine. It doesn't seem right to be so cavalier. If this proposal is what you wanted; you can't be a little more graceful? There is a big difference between R&D and actually launching something. A lot of people who actually build working hardware and launch actual rockets are going to lose their jobs from this. And they are not all associated with Constellation. Many of the companies with Constellation work, also are subcontractors on shuttle, the spacesuit and station. They have drastically increased their workforces because of the designing and manufacturing of Constellation hardware. If it is canceled, all of the younger people at those companies will be laid off (regardless of what program they work on). So a lot of people with actual space hardware experience will lose their jobs, and the money will go to R&D work.

R&D is good and maybe there has been a significant lack of it and this is an attempt to swing the pendulum, but with all of the jobs to be lost, I predict the pendulum will swing from all practical hardware to nothing but R&D. And after a time, someone will have to re-stimulate actual hardware building in the US. How long will this be? who knows.

Why are we going to ease it? It's part of the historical record now, just like every other failed NASA program in the last 20 years. I will not be taking down all of sites and images i've got.

Bye, bye, America pie
NASA is about to become dry
this is the day that NASA died......

I really believe Obama's ego is so large that the only reason he is cancelling constellation is because it was the Bush administrations idea. Privatizing the manned space program would usually run contrary to Obama's political ideology.

Come on, even the usually ineffective Bush administration got something’s right. In many ways Obama is worse because of the expectations many of us had. Obama may go down as the most disappointing president in American history. It is almost if he is trying to be a bad president.

For the good of the country we need the first African American president to a big success, not an abject failure.

Well change is hard. As from my point of view, if we really do transition to a system based on flying, and if contractors are paid to fly, then they will put pressure on the Congress to fly as many mission as they can, then that's a good thing. NASA was not predicated on flying, and it's huge dream was for 2 to 4 flights a year with the former program. After a gap of 7+ years of no flights.

As for Keith's question about the public and web based record, I think the answer will depend on whether NASA is at war with EastAsia or Eurasia? Let's see if the folks in management use 1984 as a warning or a manual.

"Come on, even the usually ineffective Bush administration got something’s right."

Which part? The part where he proposed a huge exploration program and then knifed it in back? Or perhaps the part where the Orion capsule was too heavy to be lifted by Ares and even if it did, if you aborted within the first 60 seconds the astronauts would have been incinerated in a cloud of burning solid rocket fuel?

Is that the part they got right?!

The question I have for all the Constellation Cadets is "What did you think it was going to look like had it not been cancelled?"

All those dreams of bases on the moon, manned rovers venturing out for days at a time, giant telescopes on the far side, mining for fuel for trips to Mars, and so on were just that, dreams. There was no budget to do any of those things. The last estimates I saw was that Ares I would not have anything to do until the late 2020s when the Ares V flew, and then there was no money to actually do anything at the moon.

So even if Constellation wasn't cancelled, would waiting 17 years to leave LEO and still not be able to do anything more than Apollo really be worth it?

Well the front page of NASA is pretty well scrubbed of Constellation, you can still find it under the current missions. Which I guess is good because we'll be still working it for the rest of the year?

I have no problem with the private industry if they were capable of sending men into space safely. Right now the private industry maybe 15 to 20 years away from manned space flight. On-the-other hand, NASA has a half century of know how behind it. If they do go with the misguided private route this might as well be 1948 in terms of manned space flight. After the space shuttle retires, America will be for the first time a second-tier space faring nation. China and Russia will be new world leaders in space flight. Bush made a lot of mistakes, but he is not responsible for the ending America's preeminence in space, that is Obama's unfortunately legacy.

Just about every space expert I have heard has called Obama's space budget "misguided and destructive". The only real exception is Aldrin.

I am at least politically opened minded. I believe Obama will be a disaster just like Bush. Even many well know left-wing columnists are now criticizing Obama policies.

The November elections are going to be a blood bath for the Democrats. Who in their right mind would vote for anything to do with Obama in Florida and Texas.

Of course Obama is going to lose over health care and not because of his space policies, which I am afraid many Americans have no interest in.

The nightmare has began.

This is less to do with the (admittedly dismal) Dem politics than with Keith hoping NASA will enable him to return to the glory days of Worm Watch :)

As for the Democrats, their only hope is for them to suddenly wake up and understand that if the populace had wanted ersatz Republicans in office they would have elected actual Republicans instead of giving what they thought were Democrats the Presidency and supermajorities in both chambers of Congress.

Not gonna happen in time... and the megacorporations are still running amok regardless of who's in office...

Really, that's the politics in a nutshell.